Comments

I can't handle this woman's voice for more than 5 seconds. It's hydrochloric acid, only without the enchanting bouquet.

If there was ever a celebrity that I was going to give the benefit of the doubt to, that would be Mr. Woods. If he wants to want until his face heals and then maybe offer some chatter about it to a fawning, pretentious reporter from Rolling Stone, that would be OK with me. Put another way: If this had happened to a couple in your life who you knew distantly and admired, you might resent it if others (lessers) in your circle were smirking about it and flagrantly embellishing every morsel of gossip.

sea_n_mountains 83p — 4 hours ago i think th emore interesting angle of all this - i agree it is a given that the story to date is incorrect - is that when all is said and done on this that TMZ will have broken the two most prominent entertainment/sports stories of the year (this and the death of mj), out-doing a massive reporting industry in both those fields. more evidence of the shifting realities of the news media.

Crid [CridComment @ gmail]
at November 29, 2009 11:29 AM

If he wants to WAIT, not want.

Another perfectly good blog comment shot to Hell. From now on, no more waiting until noon for Sunday coffee.

Crid [CridComment @ gmail]
at November 29, 2009 11:31 AM

She could have done the same routine with just as much funny without saying "a black man dings his car." Why bring race into a bit about what was a ridiculously surreal news report?

Why does Tiger get to tell the FHP to wait until he's ready before he talks to them. If I crashed my car at 2:30am I'd be having a discussion with a law enforcement officer as soon as I got out of the hospital, maybe before.

Conan the Grammarian
at November 29, 2009 11:38 AM

I thought Wanda was very funny. Especially the bit about the black man in him bought the Escalade, and the Asian in him made him crash it.

Eric
at November 29, 2009 12:46 PM

Well. Here's another opportunity to point out how to avoid double standards:

Don't give Tiger Woods, a millionaire for playing with a ball, an excuse for not speaking immediately to the police, unless you are also going to grant other people that excuse. Like millionaires who don't play with a ball.

And once again, don't believe what you see just because it appeals to you at first glance.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/11/29/wanda_sykes_fil.html#comment-1679668">comment from gwallan

Do you go nuts when male comedians joke about slapping women around? I don't. I get the difference between saying something for effect on stage and real life. But, I'm a fierce advocate, in real life, for getting the word out that men are very often domestic violence victims, that they are not given access to shelters, that there's a cultural predisposition for them to shrug off violence from a woman upon them...and then there's the sick case of Mary Winkler, who murdered her husband in cold blood while he was sleeping, got a slap on the wrist, and got her kids back. Vile and awful. That's the stuff that matters, not some guy talking about "slapping that bitch" or Wanda Sykes playing "imagine what went on here..."

If everything's a slight, nothing's a slight, and the big things become diminished.

So when Oprah presents women who rape little boys as celebrities, subjects them to enthusiastic standing ovations from thousands of women and transmits the whole thing to hundreds of millions of women around the globe for their entertainment...

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/11/29/wanda_sykes_fil.html#comment-1679675">comment from gwallan

Um...I don't know what Oprah does or do, but it's rape when a female or male adult has sex with a child. Don't play with me. I'm sick, I'm really busy, and I'm a fierce advocate for men's rights. Because I can laugh when a male or female comedian jokes about somebody, male or female, being slapped around, it may not appeal to you, but don't go putting on your victim shoes and drudging down some long path, because I can laugh when it's a man being joked about or a woman. Why? Because I am able to discern comedic effect from reality. You may not like that I don't treat this the way you would. Guess why I don't: Because I am not you. Now, shoo - find something serious to complain about. There's plenty out there.

I think this is the part where we're supposed to ask "What does he mean by that?", but it's hard to care. I mean, sure, we could precisely identify the point in his example at which he decided that crazyshit exaggeration was appropriate, and possibly concede that maybe there was some tiny grievance which popular rhetoric doesn't make room for, but who wants to take the time?

If the only insight you can glean from a gossip story like this one from Woods is that men are just poor, tortured creatures, why don't you take your own life?

I mean, Dude... This is the planet we're on: Sometimes when you're the hottest thing to happen in a globally popular sport in the last seventy years and you fill your smokin', flamin', explosively-hot Swedish supermodel wife with two or three babies and then she gets the idea you've been cheating, she comes after you with a golf club.

Sorry, Gwallan, but this is just a problem with human life, and it's never going to get any better.

Crid [CridComment @ gmail]
at November 29, 2009 7:58 PM

If the only insight you can glean from a gossip story like this one from Woods is that men are just poor, tortured creatures, why don't you take your own life?

Thankyou. I'll take that advice.

It's a fucking horrible world anyway.

gwallan
at November 29, 2009 9:24 PM

...made just that bit nastier by horrible little people like you.

gwallan
at November 29, 2009 9:27 PM

I'm not that little.

Crid [CridComment at gmail]
at November 29, 2009 10:42 PM

I'm just sayin', are you personally at risk for taking over a sport like he did and making that money and marrying a woman like that and then disappointing her as he is speculated to have done?

If you really are in danger of having that happen to you, many compassionate commenters here will help you avoid Tiger's outcome.

Crid [CridComment @ gmail]
at November 29, 2009 11:54 PM

Sometimes when you're the hottest thing to happen in a globally popular sport in the last seventy years and you fill your smokin', flamin', explosively-hot Swedish supermodel wife with two or three babies and then she gets the idea you've been cheating, she comes after you with a golf club.

So, we excuse the club-wielding supermodel because she used the club on her husband instead of her children or some baby seals?

Conan the Grammarian
at November 30, 2009 1:20 PM

No, I'm saying we should recognize that these people's lives are so far off the curve that they're exemplars of nothing bu their own immortal souls.

Besides, I have no idea where you're going with the babies and the seals.

Crid [CridComment at gmail]
at November 30, 2009 1:26 PM

Yes, their lives are not exemplars of anything but their own lives...as are our own.

But, I think that gwallan's trying (in a highly overwrought and melodramatic way) to make a almost-valid point.

We're laughing at the possiblity that Tiger's wife came after him with a potentially lethal weapon (aren't they all, by definition), causing him to wreck his car, which could have seriously injured him (or it did, depending upon when you watched the news report).

I recognize that there is a thin line between comedy and tragedy (me stubbing my toe, you falling off a cliff) but, does anyone remember Phil Hartman?

And if the suspicion was that Tiger had gone after his wife with a golf club, Wanda wouldn't be joking about it and Tiger wouldn't be dictating the time and terms of talking to the police, he'd be facing a restraining order and jail.

I have no idea where you're going with the babies and the seals.

It was my way of observing that society would react with greater outrage to seals being beaten by an angry Swedish woman with a golf club than they would to a golfer being beaten by one.

Substitute the seals for the victim of the clubbing and instead of Wanda making jokes about it, you'll get a major network story and naked PETA people picketing the place. Which would probably have been a more interesting media circus than this one has actually been.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/11/29/wanda_sykes_fil.html#comment-1679898">comment from Conan the Grammarian

And if the suspicion was that Tiger had gone after his wife with a golf club, Wanda wouldn't be joking about it

It wouldn't be funny at all if Tiger had actually been hurt with the club, or if there seemed to have been some danger of that, or if the tables were turned and his wife had been hurt or in danger of being hurt. It was funny because she smashed part of his vehicle -- angry Swedish woman going bonkers on an object.

It was funny because she smashed part of his vehicle -- angry Swedish woman going bonkers on an object.

First of all, I agree it was funny. The visual of large Amazonian Swedish woman whaling away on a Cadillac Escalade with a golf club while a terrified man scrambles to start the car and escape has a certain action-comedy movie appeal (think Red Sonja meets Caddyshack).

Second, we don't yet know what actually happened (and probably never will). So, all of this is speculation.

But, turn the tables. If the story was that he was the one smashing the vehicle window and she was the terrified victim inside trying to get away, would it still be funny?

Okay, "terrified" might have been a bit much. But "extremely concerned" lacks a certain comic sense. Perhaps "frantic" would have been better.

The point is, that if his wife is getting violent and attacking him (or attacking his car in order to get to him), that's domestic violence. And, according to the feminists, we're not supposed to laugh at domestic violence (at least when it happens to a woman).

Again, this is all speculation. For all we know, his wife did actually smash the window in an effort to get him out after the crash.

But, if I'm reading the reports correctly, the accident happened just outside his gate. That means he was moving pretty fast up the driveway when he hit the street and lost control. That sounds like anger or fear (or both).

Conan the Grammarian
at November 30, 2009 9:12 PM

Once again, consider how different the lives of these people are from those of the rest of us. Tiger must have known from the age of ten or so that he had a shot at once-per-century success in his sport, and he and his father had the next twenty years to dial it in. He seems like really stable guy, but he's nonetheless lived with a public adoration and interest that the rest of us wouldn't be able to imagine. It's gotta warp your soul a little.

His hot blond wife is a hot blond. A Swedish hot blond... A Swedish supermodel hot blond. While mulling over his own third-tier fame, Adam Carolla once described an attractive young woman as an animal kingdom celebrity, the most potent kind. It's not just Hollywood starlets. A famous Los Angeles radio comedian will have a fan or two whose head will turn in almost every restaurant (as will the world's greatest golfer), while the rest of the planet doesn't care. But everybody knows who the attractive young woman is: She's the attractive young woman, and her resume is irrelevant. A hot blond.

So she too has probably sailed through life without being disappointed by a lot of people, and has been able to carry along without refining her judgment of character too deeply. And when she's taken a fancy to someone with lesser intentions, then stronger, more decent people around her have likely been eager to help her see the truth (enchanted as they are by her hot-blondness). She's not needed to trust her own instincts as carefully, or to taste (or even imagine) their failure.

Neither Tiger nor the missus are stupid, but a story like this suggests they've got some undercooked insight.

So, like, is there any more to say about it?

Reynolds did a post or two about this today, too. Y'know, as celebrity scandals go, this one really doesn't have much meat for some reason... Perhaps mainly because people like Tiger so much. (Not a fan of the sport, but I always liked him.) And there are no drug (abusive) angles or money angles (yet) or precursive background stories (yet). So all that's left is for the people who wanna complain about sexism or reverse sexism to feast on a slender meal.

My own feelings weren't different with the story of Chris Brown & Rihanna (who I'd never heard of). But I remember a great passage from a Cosh column:

We all think of the battered woman as a phenomenon associated with the lowest social orders: Women accept and excuse violence against themselves, the story goes, only when they face a lack of options. But the beautiful, talented, wealthy Rihanna enjoys a practical freedom of action you or I cannot possibly imagine.

Rich or poor, people who have this happen to them –or are tempted to put up with it or risk it again– are living in a mentality that I just can't share. Almost every kind of misbehavior in a relationship works like this: If someone did it once, they'll do it again. If after some violation you feel you've made it clear to your partner that a single exception has been made, you have a deeper spiritual connection than I tend to have... And good luck to you both.

But to get all upset that somehow things would be different if the genders were reversed?

It'd be like someone saying that if Nicklaus had used a seven iron on the ninth hole at Augusta in '66, but Palmer had gone with the six iron, the tournament would have had a completely different outcome.